John W. James

Where were you when I needed you?

The saddest question we ever hear is, "Where were you when I needed you?"

That's what people ask when they find out what we do in helping grievers. We're presenting helpful and accurate information on this site, at the time you need it most, with the hope that you'll never need to ask that question.

It's an honor and a sad privilege to be addressing you, knowing that each of you has recently experienced the death of someone important to you. We also know some of you are reading this because of your care and concern for someone who is confronted by the death of someone important in their life.

We bring our personal experience in dealing with the deaths of people who were important to us, and our professional know-how in helping grievers for more than 30 years. We'll help you distinguish between the "raw grief" that is your normal and natural reaction to the death, and the equally normal "unresolved grief" that relates to the unfinished emotions that are part of the physical ending of all relationships.

A basic reality for most grieving people is difficulty concentrating or focusing. With that in mind, we asked Tributes.com to print our articles in a large type font to make them easier to read. Sharing our concern for grieving people, they agreed.

Ask The Grief Experts

Is Someone Who Cares Reading This? (Published 11/13/2012)

Q:

I'm only 17 and I'm not sure how this works, if someone who actually cares is reading this or not. But, here we go. I know there are stages of grief, and in truth I don't know what "stage" I'm in (If there really are stages of grief anyway). I'm not an open person and most of my friends don't even know about my dad's death last year. I'm thinking I might need to talk to someone because it might help me turn my life back around for the good. But I don't know if it will actually help or not. I don't think I will ever feel normal again. I watched my father die and I was the second-to-last person to talk to him. He won't see me graduate, get married or have kids. I feel trapped because I don't want to talk to my brothers or mother or friends about it.

A Grief Expert Replies:

Dear Caitlin,

Someone who cares IS reading this.

Based on your comment about someone actually caring, we can easily guess that people aren’t listening to you anymore—assuming they even listened in the first weeks and months after your dad died. [We did notice that you said you didn’t tell a lot of people, but that’s another issue.]

In addition to the sadness of not feeling listened to or heard, is the unfortunate fact that your experience is so common for grieving people. They call us, or write to us as you did, knowing that we are strangers to them. It's heartbreaking that people have to go outside of their own family or social circle just to get heard.

I want to skip to the powerful comments in your second-to-last sentence, “He won't see me graduate, get married or have kids.” You are so right. And so much of unresolved grief has to do with the “unrealized hopes, dreams, and expectations about the future.”

One problem for you is that even though those may be accurate truths about the future, you have to become emotionally complete with that reality so you can move forward, and as you say, “...help me turn my life back around for the good.”

The phrase “emotionally complete” might sound like just words to you, but we can assure you that if you take the actions of Grief Recovery, you will begin to feel a shift which will allow you to begin to feel normal again, even though your life truly is and will be different without your dad here.

As to Stages of Grief: We don’t believe there are any, and we believe that when people align themselves with the false idea of stages, it stops them from doing the work they need to do to re-establish themselves in life after someone important to them dies. If you want to read more about stages, here’s a link to an article we wrote that is posted on Tributes.com: http://www.tributes.com/grief_recovery_center/article/8

Okay. Now we need to tell you that you have to take some actions to turn your life back around. The actions are outlined in The Grief Recovery Handbook. It's available in most libraries and bookstores. Get a copy of the book, read it, and take the actions it suggests. We know it will help you.

Because we care! [If you don’t think we care, then you have to ask yourself why I’m in my office on Sunday morning taking the time to write to you…?]